As to the issue of poor performance due to psuedohash overhead, that just isn't a factor in my thinking. Because the lists of things to be processed by this code will seldom exceed, say, 20 or so, it simply doesn't seem worthwhile to get worked up over the performance aspect. Convenience and these other preferences I've listed weigh in far more for me.

Oh my, that is nicer! Well, that's what's great about Perl Monks. I think
I may not have understood the thread referred to: I thought there was some
issue with this solution where it would fail in some case. If I misunderstood,
thanks for setting it straight for me!

Update (Wed Jul 30 2003 18:02 UTC):

So the rendition of this code which can act like a *NIX filter as well as
handle input as @ARGV, is (using -l to put a final NL on):